Direct precipitation of CdS nanocrystals in glass by ultrafast laser pulses

• Direct precipitation of CdS quantum dots in glass by ultrafast laser pulses is shown. • Size of CdS nanocrystals increases from periphery to center of laser-induced microdomains. • Laser-written domains exhibit polarization-sensitive optical properties. In this study, we investigated the structure of microdomains directly laser-written in the bulk of glass and containing CdS nanoparticles by transmission electron microscopy. The CdS nanocrystals have a multidisperse size distribution while quantum dots with a minimal size of ∼ 3–4 nm are registered near the edge of a microdomains. The size of CdS nanocrystals sweepingly increases up to ∼340 nm from the periphery to the center of the laser-written microdomain. It has been found that microdomains possess laser polarization-sensitive optical properties providing opportunities for the development of advanced optical data encoding and security tagging.